Carolyn Howard-Johnson's grandson served two tours in Iraq. Her husband is a retired Army officer who served in the 1960s Berlin call up. She writes poetry, fiction and essays that explore the subjects of war, peace and tolerance. She sees a relationship between the three. This is where she gets to nag and rag about making things better in the US and beyond by the simple means of fostering more acceptance in our hearts for our neighbors -- locally as well as globally.

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Quotation:

"Better than a thousand useless words is one word that gives peace." ~ Buddha

Military Writers Society of America Award

Troop Support Giftbook

About Me

Carolyn Howard-Johnson's first novel, This Is the Place, won eight awards. Her second book, Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, creative nonfiction, won three. Her chapbook of poetry Tracings, was named to the Compulsive Reader's Ten Best Reads list and was given the Military Writers' Society of America's Silver Award of Excellence. An instructor for UCLA Extension's world-renown Writers' Program, her book The Frugal Book Promoter: How to Do What Your Publisher Won't is recommended reading for her classes, and was named USA Book News' "Best Professional Book 2004." It is also an Irwin Award winner. Her second book in the How To Do It Frugally series is The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success is also a USA Book News award-winner as well as the winner of the Reader View's Literary Award in the publishing category. She is the recipient of both the California Legislature's Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment Award and the Glendale American Business Women's Association's Woman of the Year award. Her community's Character and Ethics Committee honored her for promoting tolerance with her writing. She was also named to Pasadena Weekly's list of 14 "San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen." She is a popular speaker and actor. Her website is www.HowToDoItFrugally.com.

Beaufortby Ron Leshem, translated by Evan Fallenberg, Delacorte Press. Called a "heart-breaking, and haunting first novel." About Israeli combat.~~~~Charlie Wilson's War, the book, by George Crile.~~~~My City by the Sea by Gary Carter, a book of poems that includes "Universal Soldier."~~~~For the Good of the Many, by Gary Carter, a military/political thriler.~~~~Tracings, a chapbook of poetry by Carolyn Howard-Johnson that includes "The War Museum at Oslo." Finishing Line Press. Award of excellence from Military Writers' Society of America.~~~~Support Our Troops, a gift book of patriotic sayings by Eric Dinyer. Published by Andrews-McMeel. Foreword by Carolyn Howard-Johnson. Proceeds to Fisher House.~~~Eugene Richards is also the author of War Is Personal, "a series of phtographic and written essays about people--in and out of the military--whose lives have been changed by the war in Iraq." He is using a $50,000 grant for photography from National Geographic to write it.~~~An occasional newsletter from a veteran who says the subject is "usually conservatively political, patriotic or honors our troops. I am try to include an original poetry or commentary commentary.To subscribe send an email to HancockREMOVE@PoetPatriot.com (REMOVE the "REMOVE") with Subscribe in the SUBJECT field.

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Wednesday, February 17, 2010

As many of you know, my grandson is back now from two tours of duty in Iraq and is now stationed (very luckily) near Monterrey, CA. Thus, the plight of our troops is a subject near and dear to my heart. My poetry writing partner Magdalena Ball and I are giving away e-copies of chapbook of unconventional love poetry Cherished Pulse to 'our' troops overseas as part of Operation e-book drop. They will get an e-mail with a coupon code for a free copy at Smashbooks.

We would love to have you have a copy, too. Partly to see how the program works. Partly to share our poetry with you. The coupon code to use to get it free is ZF39H (not case sensitive).You will enter the code prior to completing your checkout.

If you prefer to send a real copy of Cherished Pulse to someone, that is easy, too. It is only $6.95 on Amazon, certainly a doable gift. And it is really beautiful with Vicki Thomas’s artwork. Go to www.budurl.com/CherishedPulse.
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Carolyn Howard-Johnson wrote the foreword for Eric Dinyer's book of patriotic quotations, Support Our Troops, published by Andrews McMeel. Part of the proceeds for the book benefit Fisher House. Her chapbook of poetry won the Military Writers Society of America's award of excellence. Find it at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1599240173/. Her novel, collection of creative nonfiction and much of her poetry is informed by interest in leading the world toward acceptance of one another. Find her web page dedicated to tolerance at http://www.carolynhowardjohnson.redenginepress.com/tolerence_and_utah_links.htm. If your Twitter followers would be interested, please pass this on to them using this widget:

Sunday, February 7, 2010

I recently found today's guest blogger through one of my other blogs, The New Book Review. I felt her book had something important to say to those who are left behind when one partner is deployed, so I invited her to provide visitors with a couple excerpts from it. I hope you'll pass this link to those you know who might benefit from it. She says,

When my husband left for Iraq in 2003, it was my first experience with a deployment, and it was not a good one. I was skilled at imagining the worst: being shot down, being kidnapped and held captive, dying. I imagined his funeral, what it would be like to see his casket lowered. There were days I couldn't stand to look at pictures of him because it was too much torture to be able to see, but not see, not touch, the real him. It was too easy to imagine I would never get the chance to see or touch him again.

I can say things like that all day long to people who have never waited for a loved one to survive a war, and they still won't really understand the experience. Two-minute clips on the news don't convey the complexity of the wait. They can't. It takes something the length of a novel, something not afraid to reveal the intimate and honest - and not always yellow-ribbon pretty - thoughts and emotions of those fearing every day that TODAY might be the day the bad news comes.

That was why I wrote Homefront, semi-autobiographical fiction, or “true fiction,” about waiting through a deployment as told from the unsentimental and no-holds-barred point of view of a young woman whose love deploys to Iraq.

Vietnam veteran Tim O’Brien writes in his war novel "The Things They Carried": "Story-truth is sometimes truer than happening-truth." I didn't write Homefront as nonfiction because my personal story wasn't unique; but the larger story of waiting is. I also think personal nonfiction has a tendency to exclude the reader, to say to them, "This is MY story. Mine." I don't want readers excluded from a story like this - I want them fully submerged. Because it is fiction, readers will enjoy the characters and their individual conflicts while, at the same time, vicariously experiencing a deployment through the eyes of the protagonist.

I was asked to choose a scene from Homefront that illustrates some of the challenges of waiting, but because there are so many, I chose two. The first conveys the difficulty of the psychological isolation, and how fine the line can be between those who "get" it and those who can't. The other is an example of how ridiculous and infuriating - but at the same time, necessary - the news media can be. Here they are:

EXCERPT FROM HOMEFRONT

Across town there is a party. A strange house filled with strangers, secret smiles and private jokes. No phone—not mine—to wait for, and watching TV would be considered poor form. I put on a different pair of jeans, clean and smelling of a fabric softener, and brush my hair and draw on a layer of lipstick. I look in the mirror and wipe it off, but it stains, in a nice way, I suppose; like my lips, if lips could be, are flushed. I turn on the TV to watch a little, just a little, with an equally little drink, and not a strong one. Not too strong. I bring it to the living room and sit down, and on the screen a sun as perfect and white as a hole punched from paper balances atop the sharp point of a mountaintop.

“Another morning here,” says a man’s voice from behind the image, “and another day for things to go extraordinarily well, or to go horribly, horribly wrong. With each sunrise there is new promise, but that can be a promise of something good or, as we know too well, Janie and Tom, it can be an omen. Yes. A promise of another kind, of something terrible to come.” A red filter covers the sun in blood. “After last night, we could sure use a good day. An intense battle raging for five hours, both in the air and on the ground, losing a reported twenty-five soldiers and marines, and killing approximately one hundred of theirs. And, as you know, Janie and Tom, that’s the highest death count we’ve had on our side in one day since the start of the war.” Janie says they’ll get back to him after these messages, but his voice carries on in my head: Your soldier—that’s right, yours!—could be one of the dead. Tune in at six to find out if you’re today’s winner of an elegant trumpeted service and a brand new, gen-you-ine American flag courtesy of the American Honor Guard!

I wonder if they have a board marked up with tally lines, “their side” and “our side,” each soldier a Roman numeral one. Jake. I. William. I.

She is one of them, one of the others. The man she cares about is here, safe with her. She can’t understand about dusk, the sun’s evil teasing. The time of evening too far from sleep and an ‘x’ across another day, but too close to darkness and the hollow air of no conversation that amplifies the TV sounds of over-acted dialogue and rehearsed applause. Denise doesn’t know the taunting, subtle fade that cues the lighting of yellow windows, the drawing of curtains to hide people living normal lives, eating dinner, yelling top floor to bottom about who wants milk and where are the scissors. She would have little to say about time spent staring out the window at shapeless clouds and cracked sidewalks and meticulously trimmed shrubs, all of it so cheerful and commonplace while over the rooftops and trees and a plane-ride away, “everyday” is mission planning and mortar fire and grass is something they might find
tucked in the fold of a letter.

BIOGRAPHY

Kristen Tsetsi is an award-winning fiction writer and a former reporter. Her novel Homefront - available for Kindle and in paperback - was inspired by her husband's 2003 deployment to Iraq with the 101st Airborne Division and is highly praised by soldiers and those who love them for its raw, intimate, and accurate depiction of waiting through a war deployment.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson wrote the foreword for Eric Dinyer's book of patriotic quotations, Support Our Troops, published by Andrews McMeel. Part of the proceeds for the book benefit Fisher House. Her chapbook of poetry won the Military Writers Society of America's award of excellence. Find it at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1599240173/. Her novel, collection of creative nonfiction and much of her poetry is informed by interest in leading the world toward acceptance of one another. Find her web page dedicated to tolerance at http://www.carolynhowardjohnson.redenginepress.com/tolerence_and_utah_links.htm. If your Twitter followers would be interested, please pass this on to them using this widget:

Here's How to Help Our Soldiers--Now

~~The Philadelphia Veterans Multi-Service & Education Center, Inc, 215 923 VETS (or go to http://www.pvmsec.org/). Ed Lowry, 215-8970-5233, will tell you how to help a program in a community where 30% of the homesless are vets.

~~You may send a greeting (think Christmas, get well or just plain good wishes!) to an injured soldier

~~Move-On is helping the USO to provide thousands of phone cards to servicemen and women stationed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world, so that they can call their friends, family and loved ones this holiday season. Give $15 to buy a phone card for our troops? Click here for information:

~~It's now cheaper to send items to APO and FPO addresses. Order free shipping boxes online. Ask for APO FPO rates at the post office. The boxes will be available online Feb. 20 at http://www.usps.com/supplies, or by calling (800) 610-8734.

~~My soldier in Iraq says that the windshield reflectors many of us use in the summer to protect our dashboards from cracking, our hands from burning on the steering wheel and our bottoms from baking on leather seats are a boon to soldiers suffering Iraqi heat, too. I saw some at the 99 cent store. (-:

~~Get your soldier a bore cleaning kit free of charge with the project Bore Snake. http://www.projectboresnake.com/moreinfo.html. It will save him or her time and assure that their weapons are taken care of. Find guidelines or how to get one on the site.

Overheard . . .

Quotations on Our Military -- Without Comment

~~Reported by the Homelessness Research Institute:Veterans are homeless: Vets represent only 11% of the cvilian adult popularion but 26% of the homeless population. The report asks for screening to learn which soldiers are at risk as they leave the service and for emergency grants for those who actually do fall behind on their rent. Write your congressman for support of this recommendation.

~~From Time Magazine:Nearly 1/2 million veterans were on the streets or in shelters in 2006.

~~From Nancy Gibbs, Time Magazine Essay"Private charity can't replace a public commitment to finish what we start, do do the long, hard, expensive work of making soldiers whole when they come home."

Notes on Tolerance . . .

Tolerance, or the lack of it, is at the root of every conceivable ill that befalls our country and others . . .

~~John McCain in response to a complaint that open borders "will destroy this country. . . " said, ". . . on the larger issue you raise, I believe the people who have come here [legally] from other countries . . . are our greatest strength." `Time Magazine, Dec. 10, 2007, page 33.

~~From Time Magazine:"Unholy Fantasy~The Catholic League called for a boycott of the film The Golden Compass, saying it promotes atheism. The league previously boycotted The Da Vinci Code."

~~At the Casden Institute at the University of Southern California (USC): Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-WS) noted that embracing strangers or outsiders is a tenet emphasized in the Torah. He urged particular tolerance for American minorities including blacks, Latinos, and Arabs and Muslims.

~~Tammy Faye Messner (Baker) passed away in 2007. She said "I refuse to label . . . . We're all just people made out of the same old dirt, and God didn't make any junk."

~~J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series is a compendium of 4,200 pages about tolerance. Now, after the last has been written, she says, "I did not set out to convert anyone . . . . It's perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it's perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God."

~~"It takes a total shift in perception to realize that you are not in the world, the world is in you." ~ Deepak Chopra

~~"It's about people being two things at once, like Italian Americans or Chinese Americans. He's (Pope Bendict) interested in that idea of coexistence." ~ Raphaela Schmid, Becket Fund for Religious Liberty (Time, April 14, 2008)